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Video Nasty
"Video nasty" was a everyday term coined in the UK by 1982, which originally applied to a number of films distributed on video that were criticized for their violent content by the press, commentators such as Mary Whitehouse, and various religious organizations. While violence in films released to cinemas had received attention from the British Board of Film Censorship, for many years, the lack of a regulatory system for video sales combined with the claim that any film could fall into children's hands led to public debate. Many of these "video nasties" were low-budget horror films produced in Italy and the United States. The uproar created by the response to video nasties led to the introduction of the Video Recordings Act 1984; which was a compulsory stricter code of censorship on videos that was then required for cinema release. Several major studio productions ended up being banned on video, falling within the scope of legislation designed to control the distribution of video nasties. Due to a legislative mistake discovered in August 2009, the Video Recordings Act 1984 was repealed and re-enacted without change by the Video Recordings Act 2010. If the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) felt that a certain video might be in breach of the Act, then a prosecution could be brought against the film's producers, distributors and retailers. Prosecutions had to be fought on a case-by-case basis and a backlog of prosecutions built up. However, under the terms of the Act the police were empowered to seize videos from retailers if they were of the opinion that the material was in breach of the Act. In the early 1980s, in certain police departments, notably Greater Manchester Police which was at that time run by committed Christian Chief Constable James Anderton; police raids on video hire shops increased. However the choice of titles seized appeared to be completely random. One raid famously netting a copy of the Dolly Parton musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) under the mistaken belief it was pornographic. The Video Retailers Association were alarmed by the apparently random seizures and asked the DPP to provide a guideline for the industry so that stockists could be made aware of the titles which were liable to be confiscated. The DPP recognized that the current system, where the interpretation of obscenity was down to individual Chief Constables, was inconsistent and decided to publish a list that contained names of films that had already resulted in a successful prosecutions or where the DPP had already filed charges against the video's distributors. This list became known as the DPP list of "video nasties". -Sylvia By far the vast majority of Video Nasties were terrible films by any standard, eschewing plot, character, and at times even lighting in favour of excessive gore. Often incomprehensible and poorly shot on VHS tape based cameras, the video nasties existed only to shock. The occasional major release (such as RoboCop) which was classified as a Video Nasty was the only exception to this general rule of quality - and even then it was not always a big step up. -Toppy